ImagineerTom

It’s a simple fact that anyone who says “this is too difficult” or “this is too expensive” or “this can’t be done” is just plane wrong and will loose any court case. Other industries have found solutions to these problems, Gridgirl has proven that actual orchestras CAN do lots to reduce noise exposure without compromising the art. My main takeaway from reading the judgement is that it’s precisely because the Roh shrugged their shoulders and didn’t even try despite knowing the problems that they got kicked.

You're making the same assumption a lot of other people (and by the sounds of it the RoH) make that excessive noise is unavoidable in an orchestra. The simple fact is most orchestra's are laid out based on traditions, most rota's are based on traditions, most rehearsal schedules are based on traditions; there are technological solutions to help & potential lawsuits to settle but just some root and branch reassessment of how the business of an orchestra is carried out can make a huge difference. I've seen Gridgirl's work first hand at the Sydney opera house where the can-do attitude meant that layouts were changed, players were tested and constant refinements to scheduling were made to try and improve the situation with great success; it was a huge culture shock two days later to be in a "traditional" pit and see so many bad practices that were based on nothing more than lazyness or tradition. The world of orchestra's has so far avoided having to follow the basic safety and welfare rules so many other sectors of entertainment have had to follow; it's finally time for them to accept they have to change and start changing.

Why are you looking at factoring / insurance? If you have cash flow issues or persistant latepayers you should be looking to solve those problems and possible refuse future orders from certain people or adjust your pricing. Sub contracting your invoices out will cost you money, cause problems for your good clients and not actually fix the underlying problem which will only get worse.

Boring reminder that in any one cell antenna area only around 150 people can be ACTIVELY using the connection at the same time (beyond this signal strength / speed will drop dramatically as the network try’s to share capacity) and any in-house WiFi system will have a lower bandwidth capacity so if you are looking at a wireless/phone solution you need to be specifying extra internet capacity/infrastructure and or allowing lots of time for audiences to respond so that the network can cope.

I feel you’ve already done more than enough and he’s made it clear that he is avoiding you. Send one final copy of the invoice, along with a cover note stating that in 14 days time you will begin legal action to recover the outstanding sum if cleared payment hasn’t been received. 16 days after you send that letter (and assuming you haven’t been paid) just start a claim via moneyclaim online. You don’t need a solicitor and you only need to send one clear, explicit warning that the payment is overdue and that you will take legal action to recover. Any other course of action is just further delaying you getting paid; I understand your reluctance to take such a terminal action but the reality is the situation is already beyond rescue & you are never going to work for this customer again so you aren’t actually burning any bridges.

You can’t “revoke” The discount you offered (well you can but it won’t stand up in court) the best action now is to start a small claims action against them; just because you start the action it doesn’t mean you have to go through with it but it’s an amazingly good tool for reminding people that owe you money that they do have to pay and you are serious about this. Moneyclaim online is a very easy to use system

SHENZHEN SMX DISPLAY CO.,LTD is probably the biggest one to recommend (with all the usual caveats about buying from Chinese manufacturing industry companies) but again I do need to stress that getting the film is the easy/cheap part and that you have a lot of work to do on getting everything else right. The tensioning alone is critical and a 1mm difference in your tension beams (along that 25m length) would be enough to make the film unusable and wobbly so make sure you’ve got all the phases of this planned out and prepared before you start spending any money.

There are several Chinese factories banging out generic versions of the film that work out around $60/m2 landed in Europe BUT the optical quality isn’t so good and they have zero backup and support (they will literally sell you a roll of plastic and nothing more) plus there are the delays involved in getting something that size shipped over from China. In absence of more information about your production timescale, the skills and experience you have with this specific technology (the western companies are more expensive but they sell you a service and expertise along with the film) the sort and scale of projectors you’re using (can you afford the 95% loss some of the Chinese films have or do you only have enough projector budget for the more efficient and this more expensive films?) and finally the application itself (background eye candy effect where resolution and focus don’t matter or primary effect where crisp sharp high resolution is essential) and finally whether you’re using this with a bounced projection or front projection. Only with all that information could anyone give an informed opinion as to which make of film is suitable for your project. .... but as you say you don’t want to reveal anything about the project and are only interested in price so I don’t see how anyone can give meaningful help?

If you need 4 pieces that size this would make it one of the biggest “hologram” projection projects ever undertaken and the manufacturers would be falling over themselves to offer you discounted rates in return for the publicity / pr potential such a massive job would generate (the average use of this technology is less than 1/2 the size of just one of your film pieces) so that is the angle you could pursue. Though as per my previous note, the amount of projection power required to project on to film at that sort of size is absolutely insane and I dread to think what your projector budget is? My quick calculations for that sort of surface area (and allowing for the typical loss and inefficiencies of this technology) says you will be using over 300,000 lumens which is a serious hire bill and a team of experienced projectionists to deal with setting up and physically running a projector array of that scale?

If the fabric is too expensive then abandon the project now. Doing this sort of work requires much much brighter projectors than you think you need. Much much more time choosing and rendering the content than you think you need. Much much more time physically setting it all up properly than you think you need. The film is the cheapest part of the whole process and if that’s pushing you over budget already you’re better off cutting your losses now and looking for an alternative method because the technology you’ve chosen so far is expensive and time consuming

and just for clarification - "goods" is basically their way of saying "not funfair equipment or a caravan" - ie a vehicle that has been designed and built such that the driving part of its use is entirely secondary to its primary use as "something else" & VOSA simply use the test criteria of "could we put a pallet of goods on it?" as their definition of a goods vehicle- hence why you see exhibition and funfair vehicles using every inch of space to ensure it cannot fall in to the category of a goods use. Also remember that YOU as the person commissioning the driver (even if you do it indirectly through an agency) are the one with the legal obligation to ensure the driver is complying 100% with the driving hours / work hours regulations; if the driver does 3 consecutive 11 hour drive days plus 4 hours "other work" on each of those days (thus using up all of the contingency time and working hours for a whole month) then gets audited by the police/vosa after 9 hours and 1 min working for you then you are the one who will be prosecuted because it's on your watch that the driver is over-hours and he is working under your instruction. All the reputable driver agencies will have systems in place to ensure this doesn't happen but I've seen lots of less formal situations where a friend of a friend or one of the performers steps up to do a bit of driving and is either over-working-hours or conversely hasn't got a proper record of the hours worked so is automatically deemed to be out of available hours.

The official giant floating monsters that a certain well known Panto company use a lot are nowhere near as big or real as you think - a rats head and a paw that reaches out of the darkness is enough to make an audience swear blind they saw a complete 3D rat so don’t concern yourself too much with the details of your prop. A good head and some wings that flap out of a cloud of smoke is all you need.

That’s a question for the system supplier Tim but I’d guess it won’t as there’s a certain amount of multiplexing used to achieve the different channels. A proper transmitter is only 50 and there are companies that do beltpack transmitters for people using the system as a tour guide aid though from memory they were £150 each

Silent disco kit is your answer - one basic transmitter will cost you £50, you can then use the traditional headphones or they have beltpack receivers that can take customers own earbuds at around £25 each. You'll instantly have a tried, tested and stable system (that will have multi-channel option already built in should you want to expand the service later) plus you can purchase just a few receivers of your own and rent-in extra packs for bigger events.

To that specification you're really only going to find hemp or synthetic hemp ropes (modern nylon synthetic ropes just don't exist that thick) so searching for "hemp" "sizal" or "jute" but be prepared for the cost and also the bulk/weight involved. 100m of 25mm rope is going to be a 2-3 man carry. No rope (unless fully submerged) will absorb enough water that it becomes a weight issue but all rope will absorb enough moisture that they are damp when handled after the rain so an appropriate waterproof bag/box would be recommended. 25mm rope will look really weedy and not sit very well on the ground; you're probably needing something in the region of 35-40mm so that it has enough weight to hold itself down and looks like proper rope. Expect to be paying around £2-3 per metre for "decorative" rope of this sort of size.

Proper screw stakes (not the dog leash ones) are amazing, marquee pegs are great to. It's more to do with technique - ideally you want the guy rope as close to 45drgrees from the vertical as you can, then the stake needs to go in to the ground so the strap is pulling at a right angle to the direction of the stake. Get this optimum condition and you'll have an anchor point that'll take a few hundred kg no problem. The more your angles deviate from this the less effective you are; in the worst configuration (vertical guy ropes or pulling at the same angle as the stake direction) and you'd be luckey to have something that could hold even 10kg

that "Australian" standard you mention is a British standard number... No, no gazebo has a fire rating relevant to deliberately cooking inside it - whether they're made from a plastic/synthetic material or old-school canvas none of them will survive prolonged exposure to heat as you would get with cooking; you might get away with a griddle/burner against an open side but if you are wanting to BBQ then at the very least you need to expect smoke damage and low-level melting no matter what brand you choose.

That would have been a very bad idea and in future you should release sides so that your gazebo isn't acting like a giant sail - these structures aren't designed to be used as refuge (you'll find that written in the instructions or terms and conditions) and if you've got wind that strong your gazebo is more likely to increase the risks and cause more injury/damage if you leave the sides on as it will either be pushed laterally across the site or be torn to pieces and send bits of gazebo flying across the site. In a 30mph wind (which would class as "a breeze") there's over 100kg of horizontal force pushing against a 3x3m flat gazebo wall, 50mph wind (which would fit your description of the situation) there's over 400kg of horizontal force - these number are all far far in excess of the loadings any pop-up gazebo you can buy has been designed to withstand which is why all guidance notes and official advice about them (as well as insurers covering the event) will specifically advise against using them as refuge. Every major festival and event you can think of will have multiple examples of outside contractors/punters turning up with pop-up gazebos of all makes and models and at some point those structures going for walks across the site and ultimately ending up a mangled twisted mess. For an occasional FOH position to provide some shade and protection from light rain they are of use but if you are wanting something that can protect you from fairly day-to-day weather conditions then you absolutely cannot consider this type of structure and should be looking at something more durable. nope - by definition if they're sold in the uk then the material must have some sort of fire-retardancy but even the most expensive model imaginable isn't even remotely heat-proof. You will see caterers that use these structures will often have only a low BBQ / griddle in there either shielded in by metal panel or against an open side of the structure; occasionally you see people who've forgotten this and by the end of the first day's use they have a wall that's all black and melty.

Somewhere on here I've written a long post on this but in a nutshell around £100-150 is the sweet spot. Cheaper ones don't last, more expensive ones are stronger but not proportionate to the extra cost. A set of wind bracing bars & a set of guy ropes and decent stakes (i.e. Webbing straps and a stake you need a tool to install) will be considerably better than the string-and-bent-coat-hanger supplied with them and increase the life of your gazebo dramatically. Leg weights (of any type) have zero effect Side panels are useful cosmetically but once the wind gets up they are the first thing you need to remove.

As I said, if any of the ideas you've already had are "too much" effort/time/money/risk then nothing anyone else could suggest would be any easier. You are (literally, ironically) asking for the impossible - epic high level magic or effects which require skills across multiple disciplines and vast amounts of planning and equipment... but in no time, with no money, overseen by people with no experience. Personally I'd go with your initial idea of the dancers "carrying" the puppet, after that I'd go with Paulears idea of a roll on box, either way I'd forget the very notion of attempting to make your puppeteer "invisible" or anything else complicated because you don't have any of the required resources to even begin to do justice to the concept. Choose something simple, practical, obtainable and focus on doing it well.

At it's heart ALL magic (and to a lesser degree special effects) is about spending far too much time, money and creativity addressing a problem than any normal person would think is sensible. That's the ultimate principle of every magic trick going and I've got a portfolio of shows where (literally) millions of dollars have been spent on tonnes of equipment which no-one knows exists and all makes something incredibly trivial happen when compared to the amount of work that has gone in to it, rather than the amount of work the audience /thinks/ has gone in to it. I'm working on bits for shows that won't hit the stage until 2017 but right now people are learning skills and practising techniques that they need to disguise just how much effort has gone in to something that is presented so flippantly. I can think of dozens of ways to achieve what your director wants but (by definition) none of them are "simple" or "easy" and if you think the things you've mentioned so far are too much hassle/cost/work then you're not going to get anywhere with this. Any one of those ideas is perfectly valid but if you don't have the time and resources to build and rehearse them properly then they will look terrible, as will anything else.

I've worked in the Playhouse, Savoy, Piccadilly, Pinter & DOY in the last couple of years, all of which are far from being in "good" condition and there's 101 blog and twitter comments about the poor state of their seating/toilets/FOH facilities. Their larger west end venues (lyceum, Apollo etc) were refurbished immediately before ATG took over; likewise many of their regional houses were refurbished or rebuilt shortly before ATG took over; the spaces they've owned/operated for a longer period of time (Milton Keynes, Stoke etc) are again looking their age... They've recently pepped up the exterior of the Phoenix Theatre but internally it's still 30 years out of date and in need of a serious upgrade.

ALW brought Stoll Moss theatres by acquiring rediculous amounts of debt and then basically sat on them not spending a penny (as he was paying a fortune in interest) on upgrading or improving them. After a few years he started offloading parts of stoll moss (they owned several ticketing and associated business's as well as the theatres) and started using the money from the sales to pay for the refurbishment of the remaining properties. The venues he sold to nimax were all in shocking condition and as was widely reported at the time of the sale he had sold them cheap so that he wouldn't have to pay for the refurbishment - he also sold them to a philanthropic millionaire (Nimax is Nica Burns, a producer and Max Weitzenhoffer - a ridiculously rich businessman) who it was widely assumed would be pumping some of his own cash in to doing them up. It's quite clear now this didn't happen as all the nimax venues are in very run-down condition (the duchess theatre is an embarrassment) and even the few stoll-moss venues ALW still owns are hardly in tip-top condition. Its worth comparing the investments made by Nymax / ALW by those made by Cameron Mackintosh in the theatres he owns - every one of them is maintained and refurbished regularly both in front of and behind the curtain and looks as good today as they did when they were built. ATG (again backed by serious money) have thus far only done the minimum maintenance & improvements to their venues...

...until the very first pass of the laser burns off the coating - then you're back to pointing a cutting beam at a reflective surface.

Since whoever "owns" the stage would have legal responsibilities to ensure it's to spec and set-up properly I can think of some good "reduce the ammount we could be sued" reasons why no-one would want to admit to "owning" it this early in an investigation